A Promise Kept: He Showed Up (Day 14 of Miracles)

This is the fourteenth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God. Today Karrilee Aggett shares her story. (See her bio below.)


Today is Do you believe in Miracles?

As in... real life, unexplainable, undeniable, there is no other way this happened 'but God!' miracles?

You don't need to hang out in this corner of the interwebs for long to know that I do! Wholeheartedly, I do!


When I was asked to write a guest post for a 31 Days series on Miracles, my only hesitation was which one would I write about? I believe we are called to live a naturally supernatural life. I believe God is ever for us, ever with us, and ever in us --waiting to leak out!

Because I am constantly expecting and looking for Him to show up and show off, --well, I believe because I have trained my eyes and ears and heart to seek... His promise is that I will find!

I have experienced first hand many miraculous things... answers to prayers, healings, provision, unexplainable encounters, etc. After a bit of prayer... this is the one that God highlighted for me to revisit here.

***

It was about twenty years ago that I got an urgent telephone call.

Ever since joining the church prayer team, I was used to late night calls with requests to pray.  We were asked to link together and pray for and with each other. Most often, the call would come from someone else on the team, we would pray, and I would pass it on... a chain of sorts, if you will.

This night, however, the call was coming from the hospital.

It was a friend who attended our small group and she was pregnant with her first child. Immediately my mind wandered and my heart raced, thinking, "She's not due yet!"

I answered the phone to find that she was a little frantic on the other end. I could hear all kinds of background busyness and feel the tension across the wire, her voice a bit shaky as she said, "We need you to pray!"



She had gone into labor and her baby boy was born too early. His little lungs were not yet formed and the rush of medical staff swooping in and taking charge made her new Mama heart beat with fear.  They were very concerned and took him away to run tests.

She said, "His lungs are not strong enough.  We need his lungs to be better."

She asked me to pray and to pass on the urgent need to not only our church but also to any other prayer lines that I knew of! So we prayed and I could feel a little peace saturate the anxious atmosphere. I promised her I would continue on in prayer, spreading the word and getting the Body to intercede.

I called the next name on the list and then decided to call other prayer lines as well.

I will never forget the conversation with a stranger on the other end of the line.

I called an international ministry prayer line and told the man of the prayer request and urgency of what was needed, ready to enter in to prayer with him right then and there. But he interrupted my posture to pray by asking me a clarifying question that would change the way I pray for others from that moment on.

He said, "I understand the need, but what I really want to know is where is your faith? What can you whole-heartedly believe for?"

"When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.” Matthew 18:20 The Message

He went on, "I can pray for wisdom for the doctors and that this baby would live and grow stronger and stronger as his lungs continue to develop, or I can pray for God to supernaturally give him new lungs. I have faith for either one... so where your faith rests is where we need to meet! The power of praying in agreement makes a world of difference!"

Being the crazy faith girl that I am, I said, "Oh let's pray for brand new lungs!"

And so we did.







We prayed powerfully, in unity, believing God for a miracle! Declaring and decreeing new life, new lungs, Gods breath... we said Amen and we meant it.

Maybe an hour later, the new Mama called me back in tears.

Happy tears!

She said that they ran tests and were waiting for the results but they took her newborn back for more X-rays and the nurses returned him, confused.

They showed her the first image captured of his lungs, clearly under developed and unhealthy... compared to the second set of X-rays showing two completely developed, fully functional, healthy lungs!

They said it looked like X-rays from two different babies!

Come on!

The power of agreement is so important!
It's so vital... so amazing and powerful that I've never forgotten to find the common ground in faith when praying with others for a need.

We could have prayed for wisdom for the doctors and staff and God could have still miraculously formed those lungs... but finding that point of agreement in what we are believing for made an impact on how I pray.

Do we always line up our faith? No. Of course not.
Sometimes we pray for crazy faith things and others are impacted to stretch and grow and rise up in prayer with us.

But other times we find the point of agreement and we watch and pray.  We stand in faith and we taste and see that the Lord is good!  He often starts at the point of agreement, and then purposes to bless us even more than we could ask or think!

So here's to new lungs, new levels of agreement, and new tools to take with us in prayer to unite our faith and join hands and hearts, and watch and see how God shows up and shows off!





Karrilee is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. She is a writer, reader, pray-er, photographer, artist, beach lover, laugh seeker...serving God to the best of her ability. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband where they are new empty nesters to their only girlie. They are also co-leaders of Dad's House, a new church plant in their hometown. She is passionate about diving in deeper with the Lord and inviting others to discover His love for them. Her life message is...Speak Life. Be Love. Shine On. Karrilee loves to share her heart and what the Lord is speaking to her over at Abiding Love, Abounding Grace.

You can connect with Karrilee on her blog, Abiding Love, Abounding Grace.  She is also all over Bossy Social Media (and clearly has a love/addicted relationship with it!) You can find her on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram as well!

An Unbelievable Peace: Three Generations Being Made Whole. (Day 13)

This is the thirteenth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God. Today, Kristina Notestine shares her Grandma's story.

 My grandma has always been such an inspiration to me. God gave me the grandma that I have to show that through God our lives can dramatically change forever. Life for grandma has never been easy. There has been constant dysfunction and pain in every aspect of her life. But grandma keeps pressing on. Her constant leaning on God and always dwelling in His word wasn't always like that for her. 

At a tender age of two, my grandma's dad died. A few years later her mom remarried his brother. It ended up being a horribly, emotionally, damaging relationship built upon his alcoholism and abusiveness towards her. I can only imagine that pain and confusion that she had growing up with that relationship. She moves out and gets married to my grandpa. Together they started a family as they traveled around place to place because grandpa joined the Air Force. Grandma continued to hold onto the hurt and anxiety from her childhood which made her leave her family three times in a 7 year period. My mom said that the first time grandma left was unexpected and no one knew where she went. The last two times she committed herself into a mental hospital after having a nervous breakdown. At that last time, she stated that she wanted a divorce. Both my mom and aunt told me how they both withdrew from the family unit during that time. It was so hard to deal with avoiding it seemed to be the best thing. As my mom put it, as soon as she graduated, she moved out immediately to go live with my dad. That summer grandma and grandpa got back together. But life just went on as much as it could until a year and a half after coming home from mental hospital through the relationship of my aunt's friend and friend's mom, my grandma became a Christian.

When I asked my grandma now about how she felt after she became a Christian, she told me that she had a peaceful mind and that she felt different towards others. To simply put it, she had unbelievable peace. When she become a Christian, she clearly heard that Holy Spirit tell her that grandpa and my aunt were going to become Christians in her life. To this day this is something that she has held onto and will continue to hold onto until she dies. This simple statement of faith and what I have seen has always impacted my life. And it was only because God got ahold of her and gave her unbelievable peace.

Becoming a Christian and having this unbelievable peace was the only thing that changed in her life. My grandpa now was retired from the military and began to take up drinking on a daily basis. He was this man that had a rough exterior but as you got to know him, he did have a soft side. But the drinking brought out the worse of him. When we confronted her with our frustrations, her response always was, "It is only by God's grace." We witnessed often that unconditional love that she showed to him. She practiced this constantly by drawing near to God through His word from her huge stack of verses cards and getting involved in church.

After she became a Christian, grandma constantly told her love ones that she was praying for them. Mom said she just blew her off. But through grandma's praying and God's intervention when I was 2 years old, both of my parents became Christians. I too also became a Christian when I was 7. Our generational shift was already happening.

When my dad retired from the military in 2000, we moved back to where all the grandparents were. This is where I really got to know grandma and life as she lived it. I saw a person that dealt with an angry drunk with tons of grace and through that saw the softening of my grandpa's heart.

Since 2000, my family and I got to see the slow transformation of grandpa from completely not wanting to talk about God to being completely open to talk about God anytime with anyone. He would always joke around that he couldn't enter a church building without it caving in. But near the end of his time here on earth, he would come and pick up grandma up and actually sit down during fellowship time and talk to people who came to talk to him. God was most certainly working but He was using heavily my grandma in his life. This interaction with my grandfather has always made an huge impact in my life and the way I treat my husband who also struggles with the things of God. Her absolute faith that God told her that grandpa was going to become a Christian motivates and moves me to pray and live the same way.

 

This past December my grandpa died of a weak heart because of all the stress of taking care of my grandma who now suffers with a form of dementia. It happened during the night. He got out of bed stating that he had chest pains before falling on the floor. My grandma and uncle called the ambulance where they stabilized his heart until they got to the hospital. And then he had another heart attack and died.

Because of my grandma's faith, I believe that my grandpa accepted Jesus as his Savior. None of us can judge or think it is nonsense because anything is possible with God. Just seeing him soften throughout the years constantly seeing and hearing the gospel, I don't know when he did believe but when my grandma dies, she is going to see him in heaven.

After grandpa died, my grandma now lives in a nursing home. Yes, she is sad but if you talk to anyone there or who knows her, my grandma is still very much in peace. She always takes the advantage of any opportunity to tell someone about God. Since she can't see well and can't get around without an wheelchair, all she does is sit in her chair listening to hymns and to someone reading the Bible on C.D.

Through my grandma's example, I can hold onto the fact that God can graciously change my life dramatically. He does that when I hold onto the promises and commands in His word just like grandma does. He does it through constant reliance on Him. He does it when I can recognize my need for Him. I am so thankful for my grandma and all that she has taught me by word and by her actions.

Love you, grandma!   

 Kristina is a wife, mother to one little girl and a regular blogger at Progressing through Grace. Her blog enables her to share her journey of progressing through life in God’s grace and Word to encourage and challenge both herself and her readers. You can connect with Kristina on Twitter @krisflick and Facebook at Progressing through Grace.